


Look inside my quicksilver heart

by Shamelessly_Radiant



Category: Der Besuch der Alten Dame
Genre: Alfred dies, F/M, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 05:30:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13070139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shamelessly_Radiant/pseuds/Shamelessly_Radiant
Summary: Claire thinks about what she wants, what she thinks she wants, and what she needs; Alfred accepts his fate. In the end everything is too little, too late.(Or: Claire discovers retribution leaves a rather bitter taste behind, and vengeance does nothing to fill the emptiness inside.)





	Look inside my quicksilver heart

**Author's Note:**

> Quicksilver - changing often in ways that you do not expect.

When she hears about the town meeting— no trail, obviously— she paces, she stews. She reminds herself: this is what she wants, this is what she wants. Justice, nothing but justice. Justice for what happened to her.

(Vengeance on this town full of righteous, virtuous people.)

She personified all the evil that happened to her in Alfred, and she’ll make murderers of this town just as they made a whore out of her. She bought them, bought Güllen, made it into a brothel.

This is what I want, she tells herself, but why do the words ring so hollow? Because he told her he never stopped thinking about her? Because he told her he’d like to turn the time back to what they once were? Because he told her he chose Mathilda only so she could be free? Because he told her he thought she was dead?

All excuses, _excuses_! He _destroyed_ her. It is her turn now. This is what she wants.

Because he asked her to forgive him? Because he told her he still loved her?

He still loves her.

And she still loves him.

No. No. Once they could have had it all, but he ruined it. He cast her aside, he _killed_ her.

And yet—

This is not what she wants.

 Her leg hinders her progress to the market place. She arrives too late; the people have killed a man for greed and called it _justice_ , just as she asked them to do. Just as she asked for vengeance and called it justice too. She is no better than they, but the difference is that she knows this.

She made them murderers, and it was so very easy, and now she is too late, but this time, she is the engineer of her own destruction, holding the strings of her own fate.

Such irony. She longed for this power, and now she’d rather not have it. But she is too late, too late, everything is too little, and this, her dream for years, does nothing but pain her. Seeing him dead on those stairs, it is nothing like what she hoped it would be. She feels hollow, empty, unsatisfied.

She never stopped feeling like that, after that mockery they called a trail.

She pays them. Two billions. She never goes back on her word.

How could this happen? They loved each other, didn’t they?

They could have had it all—

Almost.

She leaves with his cooling body held in her arms, resolved to never come back. She hopes this city becomes as rotten as the people in it, rotten to the core.

How could this happen? They loved each other, didn't they? They _loved_ each other.

Now she knows: you don’t give someone you don’t love the power to destroy you.

**Author's Note:**

> What a powerful story. What an ending. What sadness.  
> If you ever feel yourself become cold as stone, love can heal you-- but you need to give it power to do so. Claire had a choice, but in the end, wasn't she justified? What Alfred did to her, and the whole town. How quickly they turn onto someone they used to call their own, how quick they are to say, we are different, to cast someone out for his/her ugliness and refuse to see the ugliness in their own heart. At least the teacher & the pastor realised what they were about to do, at least Gerard Lang recognised his part in the trail... but Mathias Richter? The good, honorable mayor of a good, honorable, virtous village?
> 
> Ungeheuerlich


End file.
